Tenement Housing Floor Plan

Researching new york s tenement housing history.

Tenement housing floor plan.

Irma and paul milstein division of united states history local history and genealogy the new york public library. The new york public library holds multitudes of materials on our city s history. Tenement evolution and history 1880 s old law to post 1901 new law back in the second half of the 19th century the walk up tenement buildings were well established in new york city s east village as cheap quick housing for the masses of newly arriving immigrants flooding into the city in waves at various times. In working class tenements the entrance to the close the passage leading to the stairs was a simple opening.

Flagg the new york tenement house evil and its cure. The scope ranges from the built environment to social conditions from natural history to scientific discovery and the amount of material available to research a cornerstone issue such as tenement housing is vast. Plan of first floor. Plan of upper floors new york public library digital collections.

Riis the battle with the slum. The belknap press of harvard univ. Two bathrooms were located on the landing in the hallway for common use. Accessed september 9 2020.

This is the source of the module floor plan below. Riis how the other half lives. The term tenement is both a legal term codified in city regulations and a word commonly used to refer to a certain type of multi family housing. Studies among the tenements of new york.

The quality of this form of housing varied across the city and was signalled by the character of the front entrance. As officially defined in the tenement house law of 1867 a tenement is any building housing more than three families each living and cooking independently. The symmetrical floor plan of the typical old law tenement included four virtually identical apartments per floor three rooms each with the entry opening to the kitchen containing a washtub alongside a sink opposite a wood burning stove feeding into a flue. Scribner s magazine july 1894 pp.

A model tenement house. Built in 1863 the building is an example of an old law tenement as defined by the tenement house act of 1867 and was home over the years for some 7 000 working class immigrants.